Up to around 1750, painting was imbued with pleasure, fable and light-heartedness. But, in the second half of the century, painters found themselves faced with a choice. Were they to be charming or instructive? Just as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Diderot denounced society's decadence and exhorted a return to a simple, virtuous way of life, the trend towards heroic Antiquity, which in David and Jean-Germain Drouais' works soon became synonymous with revolutionary valour, was directly opposed to the rocaille style and its best-known exponents Boucher and Fragonard. But, between these two extremes, were a host of nuanced styles sometimes represented by lesser-known painters, such as Natoire. At the very end of the century, the François Gérard, Gros and Girodet generation was already forming the avant-garde of Romanticism.